Google's upcoming Pixel smartphone could feature a bigger screen, two front-facing cameras, and its very own notch, in a design that sounds very similar to the $999 Apple iPhone X.

According to a new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Google plans to release two new phones in October — the Google Pixel 3 and the Google Pixel 3 XL.

The new devices will feature dual front-facing cameras and an upgraded camera on the back. The larger device will have a nearly edge-to-edge screen, plus a notch design at the top similar to the iPhone X, Bloomberg reports.

Also new this year: Google has reportedly approached Foxconn, the same manufacturer that produces iPhones, to discuss building the Pixel phones.

Advertisement

Google first introduced its line of Pixel smartphones in 2016, and released the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL in 2017. The phone is widely considered one of the best Android smartphones you can buy, but last year's models were beset by a wave of issues, including problems with the Pixel 2 XL's screen, weird clicking noises coming from the smaller Pixel 2, delivery delays, and more.

According to a report from February, Google shipped 3.9 million Pixel phones in 2017, which is equivalent to about a week of iPhone sales.

You can read more about Google's plans for the Pixel 3 over at Bloomberg.

Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla Model 3 occupants will be able to control music and the rear-seat climate with the Tesla app, get sonic blind-spot notifications, and receive an improved user interface.

On Wednesday, Musk said on Twitter that the features would arrive over the next few months.

Earlier in the day, Consumer Reports gave the Model 3 a "Recommended Buy" rating after Tesla made over-the-air improvements to the vehicle's braking system. The publication said the update reduced the distance the vehicle needed to go from 60 mph to a complete stop by 19 feet.

Tesla is able to make wireless software updates to its vehicles to improve performance, fix bugs, and add new features. Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports' director of auto testing, said in the updated review that he had never seen a wireless update result in an improved track performance for a car in his 19 years with the publication.

Advertisement

In its initial review, Consumer Reports did not recommend the Model 3, citing a braking distance that was worse than any modern vehicle it had tested and criticizing the vehicle's touchscreen, ride quality, rear seat, and the amount of wind noise it produced while driving at high speeds. But the publication said it was impressed by the vehicle's range, handling, and acceleration.

Musk thanked Consumer Reports for its feedback after it published its updated review and said Tesla has made improvements to the Model 3's ride quality and noise emission and will roll out improvements to its user interface later in the month.

Musk is known for his active presence on Twitter, which he frequently uses to engage with customers and announce vehicle updates.

Whole Foods shoppers who are also Amazon Prime members should get used to seeing blue as they try and save some green.

As the discounts for Prime members roll out at Whole Foods stores across the country, customers can expect to see some other changes, too. In addition to the blue Prime signage that calls attention to the available deals, like 10% off sale items and steeper discounts on a rotating selection of other goods, employees are also being given blue, Prime-branded aprons and hats, according to Yahoo Finance.

The blue is a bit different from the green that Whole Foods employees are usually clad in. It's unclear if the new uniform will distributed to all employees or just the Prime ambassadors, who will be standing by to inform customers about Amazon Prime and the deals available through the paid membership.

The new uniforms are just the latest change as Amazon moves to bring Whole Foods further into its ecosystem.

Advertisement

An Amazon spokesperson did not immediately return Business Insider's request for comment on whether the uniforms are permanent or promotional in nature.

The Prime deals rolled out earlier in May at Whole Foods stores in Florida. They were expanded Wednesday to 12 additional states: Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The deals are also now available at all of Whole Foods' 365 stores.

During a panel at Recode's Code Conference on Tuesday, Facebook's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer made a comment that likely stumped a few marketing and advertising execs in the room.

When asked if Facebook should be regulated over concerns that the company has a monopoly on internet services, Schroepfer said, "Consumers are smart—they use the products that they want. We're a very small part of the overall ads business so I think we're honest when we say we feel competition all the time."

For anyone that's been following the advertising business for the past few years, Schroepfer's comment seems outside the reality that is the duopoly of Facebook and Google, which continues to dominate the digital media industry.

It's impossible to avoid Facebook

To be clear, yes, Schroepfer's comment is accurate. Facebook made $40.65 billion in revenue during 2017, according to the company's earnings. Research firm eMarketer estimates that advertisers spent $585 billion globally last year, meaning that Facebook revenue adds up to roughly 7% of global ad budgets last year.

eMarketer

But talk to any agency, publisher, or analyst, and Facebook's large footprint on the ads business is impossible to ignore.

Advertisement

Meanwhile, the trend towards higher digital ad budgets continues, and Facebook's share of the ad world is only likely to grow in coming years while print and TV spends decrease.

Here's a chart from EMarketer's report that shows how much digital ad budgets are growing:

eMarketer

Facebook is bigger than Comcast, Verizon and Disney

In fact, ad agency Zenith Media says that desktop and mobile advertising overtook traditional TV to become the biggest medium last year, growing 14% year-over-year. By 2020, internet ad spending will represent 44.6% of global ad spend, eclipsing TV's expected 31.2% of ad spend.

Zenith Media

Zenith also puts out a yearly report on the top 30 largest media companies. Facebook does not consider itself a media company, but the report's methodology considers Facebook to be one of seven "digital platforms that are funded by internet advertising."

Advertisement

Between 2012 and 2016, Facebook's revenues grew 528%, placing it at No. 2 on the list. Google's parent company Alphabet was No. 1 on the list.

eMarketer Suffice to say, little about Facebook's ad business is actually little.

You can watch the full Recode interview with Facebook's Schroepfer and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg below:

"This is the sketchiest thing I've ever been a part of," says YouTuber Siraj Raval, midway through an awards ceremony billed as an event to honor both himself and other online influencers in the cryptocurrency space.

We're at the Crypto Influencer Awards Summit, which is taking place as a part of New York's blockchain week in lower Manhattan. Some of the most influential cryptocurrency evangelists on the internet have flown in to the city to receive awards in categories like "Best Crypto Musician," "Most Relatable," "Best Video Production," and "Most Funny."

Influencers like writer and producer Taryn Southern, crypto rappers TeamHODL and Coin Daddy, and YouTubers like Crypto Blood, Crypto Bobby, Cryptonauts, and I Love Crypto are all being honored for their efforts in spreading the gospel of the blockchain online.

Everyone is kinda famous — even the people who aren't famous are treated like they might be. One man, who volunteered to help set up the event so that he wouldn't have to pay $600 for a ticket, is handed a medal honoring him for his work in "Best Miscellaneous Category." (Later, he said that the event's host asked him to return the medal because they needed it back.)

Advertisement

When a guest asks me to take his photo with Siraj Raval, I ask if he likes Raval's YouTube videos.

"I've never seen them," the man admits. He then explains that he wants a photo because Raval seems like he might be famous.

I am also momentarily mistaken for an internet celebrity. At one point, a would-be fan approaches me, seemingly star struck: "I absolutely love your channel," he says.

When I tell him that I've never posted a video to YouTube in my life, he shrugs.

"Hm," he says. "I could have sworn it was you."

Advertisement

In the lobby, a crowd of mostly men wearing t-shirts adorned with blockchain start-up logos are chatting excitedly about the technology. Everyone seems to know each other or have heard of each other from the internet. ("This is like a chatroom, but IRL," one influencer observes.)

A beautiful woman shyly approaches a crypto rap artist called Coin Daddy.

"Coin Daddy, I need to talk to you," she says, softly. "I need you to help me make money."

In the cryptocurrency community, online influencers are a sought-after commodity.

Crypto rapper Coin Daddy reclines on a small bench. Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

During one panel that takes place early on, Siraj Raval, whose channel has close to 400,000 subscribers, says that he's repeatedly dogged with emails requesting him to feature tokens for upcoming initial coin offerings, or ICOs. Taryn Southern also says that she's constantly asked to promote tokens on her channel.

Advertisement

For influencers, endorsing ICOs is a lucrative but dicey market. Raval says that he charges around $50,000 to post a 20-minute explainer video on his channel discussing a company's token offering. While marketing ICOs is a profitable business, Raval says he seldom endorses companies that approach him with unsolicited requests.

"There's a lot of fishy ICOs out there," one influencer says. "And if they're not outright scams, then at the very least they're sketchy."

An entire panel at the conference is dedicated to determining whether or not a token offering is a potential scam.

"If Vitalik [Buterin, the founder of ethereum] is listed as an advisor, that's a white flag," one speaker advises.

Fraud is so endemic within the cryptocurrency community that counterfeit coin offerings are now commonly referred to as "pump and dump schemes," and often involve a few ringleaders who generate interest in a token. Once enough people have bought in, the organizers rapidly sell off their investment and evaporate from the internet with their newfound profits.

Rapper Shawn Mims, best known for his single "This is Why I'm Hot" with Erik Mendelson. The pair are launching an app geared towards musicians called RecordGram. Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

For anyone hosting an ICO — legitimate or otherwise — elevating public awareness is crucial. In the past few months, efforts to crowdsource cryptocurrency capital have ranged from ingenious to bizarre: Some companies have paid people to write token names on their bodies and share the photos online while others have seemingly absconded with their investors' cash, all in the name of raising awareness.

Advertisement

One of the most popular ways to attract public interest in an ICO is through online influencers. In the cryptocurrency community, influencers are regarded by many as having some of the most important opinions in the industry. As public figures, their leverage is considered so invaluable that several of the event's attendees told Business Insider that they paid $5,000 to pitch their company's token in front of the crowd for a few short minutes. (For comparison, a startup employee said that their company paid $10,000 to rent a booth for a full three days at New York's blockchain conference Consensus.)

Endorsement from an influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers can elevate a token's public profile, even if that endorsement is only tacitly implied.

At the Crypto Influencer Awards Summit, one influencer told Business Insider that a fan asked to take her photo. When she agreed, she said that he positioned her in front of his company's logo so that it would appear as though she was a supporter of his product.

Antics like this are fairly common, another influencer said.

The influencer said that he's heard of people putting mining rigs with their company's logos in busy neighborhoods and asking bypassers to pick up the rig so they can guess how much it weighs. When the person complies, they snap a photo of them holding the rig, and use the photo to showcase outside interest in the company.

The account executive for Stroken Tokens, a company that organizes crowd-sourced pornography through digital currencies, poses at his company's booth. He said there aren't enough videos of women in their twenties jumping around in bounce houses on the internet. "Trust me, I've looked." Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

Midway through the Crypto Influencer Awards Summit, a strain of skepticism surrounding the event's legitimacy begins to emerge.

Advertisement

So far, the proceedings have been so disorganized that one of the influencers in attendance posted a video of the event entitled "Most Awkward Conference Start Ever" to YouTube.

For an event where the cheapest tickets cost as much as Hamilton seats, I'm not sure what I expected from the awards ceremony, but this certainly isn't it.

Admittedly, everyone still seems to be having a good time, mostly because no one is really paying attention to the panels taking place at the front of the room. The YouTube stars in attendance have expansive and charismatic personalities, and the expectation that they sit quietly and listen is equal parts ridiculous and impossible.

Phu Styles and Taryn Southern. Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

People are milling about and talking loudly. The host, wearing a foam Statue of Liberty crown, interrupts the panelists again and again to remind people, in increasingly strenuous tones, to please sit down and be quiet. For the most part, her pleas are ignored.

Advertisement

But despite the amount of fun everyone seems to be having, people are beginning to remark that the event is, to say the least, very weird.

Small, strange incongruities are adding up: A few of the celebrated guests who haven't been alerted to a last-minute change in venue show up nearly an hour late. Even though the event cost hundreds of dollars to attend, no one seems to be checking tickets. (No one checked whether or not I had a press pass, and I simply walked in.)

Miscellaneous suitcases are scattered haphazardly throughout the venue's back rooms, where private meetings are taking place. A guest says that the event's organizer has spent the better part of the evening outside, arguing with the police. Drinks are covertly poured into red plastic SOLO cups from behind a fold-up table throughout most of the night. A hallway bathroom has no mirror, no toilet paper, no paper towels, and somewhat mysteriously, no toilet seat.

Adam Charles, the marketing manager of the host company Boosto, later said that the NYPD made four separate visits to the venue, the Hudson Club, due to issues with entertainment and alcohol permits. He said he wasn't aware that the venue may not have had the appropriate licenses to host an event with alcohol and music.

At one point, Chandler Guo appeared wearing a gold plastic crown and yelled at the crowd to buy bitcoin. Later in the evening, he told Business Insider that he currently mines multiple bitcoins each day at his mining farm in Asia. Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

When a man wearing a gold plastic crown takes to the stage midway through the proceedings, and shouts that everyone should buy bitcoin, and only bitcoin, he is roundly heckled by the crowd.

Advertisement

"If you don't have bitcoin, you should go," he shouts into the mic. "You should leave here."

He continues: "We organize everyone here, for what? Just so they can buy your coin."

"Who is that guy?" I ask one heckler in the audience.

"Some Chinese bitcoin whale," he replies. (Later, the event's host, Heidi Yu, identified the man as the prolific Chinese bitcoin miner Chandler Guo, and said that his appearance on the stage was intended to be a joke. She also said that she regretted allowing him to speak. Guo himself did not respond to a request for comment.)

Some of the influencers wonder aloud whether or not the event has been thrown for the express purpose of raising awareness for the host company's forthcoming ICO.

Advertisement

YouTuber Omar Bham tells me that skepticism surrounding the event began even before the evening's official proceedings kicked off. He points out a tweet posted by the influential entrepreneur and bitcoin advocate Andreas Antonopoulos who, weeks earlier, wrote that people should boycott the event because of its misleading advertising.

The Crypto Influencer Awards prominently displayed the logos of several top influencers on its site, even though they hadn't confirmed their attendance. Boosto also advertised media partnerships with various publications, including Business Insider, on the page's event invitation, even though such a partnership didn't exist. When asked why Boosto advertised Business Insider's logo on its site as a media partnership, the company's marketing manager, Adam Charles, said he thought that anyone attending the event would like what he called "free promotion."

"If we give out media passes, we put a media partnership on the site," said Charles. "I guess we should maybe ask for clarification in writing in the future. We're still learning."

Chris DeRose, who has written for Breitbart and CoinDesk, holds up awards for "Best Journalist" and "Best Podcast." Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

Online, other cryptocurrency thought leaders decried the event as "despicable and deceitful."

Advertisement

At one point in the evening, the host, Heidi Yu, took to the stage to address the murmurs within the crowd. With the microphone in hand, Yu announced that the event was not a scam.

"Let me tell you guys, this is legitimate," she said.

Phu Styles, founder of the Women in Blockchain Foundation and an active figure in the cryptocurrency community, said that it's not unusual for last-minute changes to take place at cryptocurrency conferences because the industry tends to be incredibly fast-paced. Bigger than expected crowds and changes in the lineup are all par for the course.

Another influencer who received an award said that the event was weird, but that its strangeness was only to be expected.

"This is the blockchain," he said. "This is why it's called the Wild West, right?"

Crypto rappers who go by the names Cluff and Hashbrown from TeamHODL with blockchain investor Phu Styles. Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

The frontman behind the crypto rap group TeamHODL, who performed at the event and goes by the nickname "Hashbrown," said he was pleased that Boosto had paid for his hotel room and plane ticket to New York. Many of the other crypto influencers who attended the event also said that Boosto compensated them for their airfare and lodging costs.

Advertisement

"They could have planned it better," said Hashbrown. "But I think they're genuine. At the heart of it, they're doing right by crypto."

A few days later, I called up Siraj Raval and asked him what he thought about the Crypto Influencer Awards Summit in retrospect.

"Yeah, I think they might have hosted the event just to promote their brand," he said. "If that's what they were doing, then it's a pretty smart idea. It worked, right? I came. You came. At the very least, we all showed up for it."

As a part of a performance dedicated to the creator of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, Cryptonaut performer Alex Coyne lit a dollar bill on fire. Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

Omar Bham posted a video to his channel Cyrpt0 a few days later, saying that he thought the event was misleading.

Advertisement

"[A lot of people] were saying that this whole conference was a scam," Bham says in the video. "I would argue, you know, you might be right. Some people paid $500 just so they could get into this room...It was an odd event."

He goes on: "It's the question of what do you get out of it? I think that's a lot of what could be a scam, which is something that's misleading in my opinion: Someone promising you something and then giving you something else. I think that's what you can call a scam."

When I asked Adam Charles what he thought about the fact that some at the event suspected it might have been a scam, he said that he was hurt by this assumption and that the event's issues were due to a last-minute change in venue that was beyond his control. He also said that he was actively reaching out to the influencers who attended to see how he might be able to improve Boosto's event participation in the future.

"The ironic thing is that I'm sick of people getting scammed," he said. "I made the cryptocurrency influencer website so that we could point out the influencers people can trust online so that they don't get scammed."

Charles said that many people interested in learning about cryptocurrencies rely exclusively on YouTube influencers for their information.

Advertisement

"The thing is that crypto is so new, and all of these crypto influencers suddenly popped up out of nowhere and people don't know who to trust," he said. "I hate banks, and I hate scams. That's the whole reason I'm into crypto."

Steve Pope/Getty Images

The legendary investor Warren Buffett tried to buy a $3 billion stake in Uber earlier this year through his company, Berkshire Hathaway, Bloomberg News' Eric Newcomer and Olivia Zaleski reported Wednesday.

However, the deal fell apart because of disagreements over the size and terms of the potential investment, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the discussions. Neither Uber nor Berkshire Hathaway responded to the news outlet's request for comment.

Transportation has been a popular sector for Buffett as he decides what to do with Berkshire's estimated $160 billion cash pile that is ripe for acquiring new companies. In October, the firm bought a 39% stake in the Pilot Flying J truck-stop chain. It also owns a major stake in BYD, a Chinese electric-car maker.

News of the attempted investment comes as Uber is trying to reinvent itself. Dara Khosrowshahi, who took over as Uber's chief executive in November after the departure of the embattled founder Travis Kalanick, has been featured on advertising slots across the country apologizing for the company's past missteps.

Bloomberg reported that Khosrowshahi stepped in and asked that a deal with Berkshire be cut to $2 billion.

A Berkshire investment in Uber would have looked similar to Buffett's $5 billion deal with Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg said. In the depths of the financial crisis, Buffett loaned a lump sum to the bank in exchange for preferred stock, which ended up netting him a cool $1.6 billion profit.

That deal was brokered by Buffett's favorite banker, Byron Trott, who now runs a family office in Chicago known by his initials, BDT; it also helped finance Buffett's Pilot Flying J investment.

Read the full Bloomberg report »

For years, many TV folks who rely on advertising have privately worried that Netflix — and the on-demand, binge-watching culture that has come with it — was causing consumers to develop a disgust for ads.

On Tuesday evening at the Code Conference, we got another data point from a Hulu co-owner that suggests consumers have a desire for ad-free TV: about half of Hulu's 20 million subscribers choose to pay extra for the ad-free version.

"It's very popular," 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch said of Hulu's ad-free tier, which costs $11.99 per month ($4 more than the $7.99 ad-supported tier). "I think it's about even," he said of the amount of subscribers who choose each version. (Update: a Hulu source said that under 40% actually choose the ad-free version.)

Though the figure is nebulous, it still represents a change from when Hulu introduced the ad-free tier back in 2015. At the time, former Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins positioned it as a way to give a minority of users the choice to remove ads because their complaints were "too much of a negative" for the brand.

Advertisement

"Almost overnight, the complaints about advertising on the limited-commercials plan plummeted," Hopkins said in late 2015. Mission accomplished from that perspective. But Hopkins described the ad-free version as more of a niche offering from Hulu than a fundamental change. He said the "vast majority of customers" had chosen the ad-supported version, "which is what we thought would happen."

The idea was that if you made people understand that they were choosing to save money and watch ads, they would be happier — but they would still choose ads. But there is clearly now an appetite among Hulu's user base to pay more for an ad-free product as well, though it may not be quite as large as Murdoch initially stated.

What else has changed in that time? Netflix solidified itself as a dominant player in the TV ecosystem that wields major power and has tons of influence on how the public consumes television shows.

Depending on whom you ask, the next year or two could be the best of times for Apple — or the worst.

The company has been struggling over the last two years to grow unit sales of the iPhone. Optimists see that as a golden opportunity, because they think it means there will be lots of pent-up demand for new models. But pessimists think it's a prelude for what's to come.

Count Nehal Chokshi in the latter group. In a research note on Wednesday, the Maxim Group financial analyst warned that Apple's iPhone sales will likely decline in its next fiscal year, which starts in September, dragged down by the contraction of the overall smartphone market.

"We believe the smartphone market has now reached the stage of what the PC market reached in 2012 of consistent [year-over-year] declines," Chokshi said in the note, in which he reduced his rating on Apple's shares to a "hold" from a "buy." He continued: "We see risk that [Apple] will only maintain to lose modest share in [fiscal 2019] and as such, we are reducing our iPhone estimates."

Advertisement

Echoing some of Chokshi's pessimism, IDC put out its own forecast Wednesday for Apple and the smartphone industry. The market research firm expects overall smartphone shipments to decline by 0.2% this year after falling 0.3% last year. Despite that, IDC expects Apple's shipments to grow by about 2.6% this calendar year.

Although it was once known for its Mac computers, Apple is now basically a phone maker. iPhone sales accounted for about 64% of its overall revenue over the last 12 months and, quite likely, the vast majority of its profits.

But the company has been struggling for years to grow the business, a task made all the more important by the stagnation of its computer and iPad businesses and its inability to develop another hit product able to boost its revenue in a meaningful way. Apple's unit sales of iPhones grew by just 1% over the last 12 months, while its iPhone revenue grew by 10% over the same period.

Chokshi is forecasting that Apple's struggles will continue. Apple's smartphone sales are likely to be dragged down by the overall market, because the company doesn't have another hot product that will likely boost them, Chokshi said.

When the PC market went into decline, Apple actually grew its Mac business. But its Mac sales benefitted from the iPhone. Apple was able to convince many of its customers who loved its phones to buy one of its computers also, a phenomenon often referred to as the "halo effect." Don't expect history to repeat itself, Chokshi said.

Advertisement

We "do not expect a halo effect to support the iPhone franchise," he said.

Accordingly, while he expects Apple to sell about 223 million iPhones this fiscal year — up about 2.9% from fiscal 2017 — he thinks that number will drop to 208 million in fiscal 2019.

As a result, he thinks the company's sales and earnings will be significantly below Wall Street's current consensus estimates. He expects Apple to post $12.62 a share in earnings next year on $258 billion in sales. On average, analysts are projecting earnings of $13.27 a share on $272 billion in sales.

Chokshi's forecast stands in stark contrast to that of Daniel Ives at GBH Insights. Ives has argued that all the iPhone owners who have held off on buying recent models will be lured in by the next generation of phones, which are expected this fall. That will lead to a "massive" wave of some 350 million iPhone sales over the next 12 to 18 months, he forecast.

The South Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Australia's closest neighbor, directly to its north, will temporarily ban Facebook as the region grapples with potentially troubling side effects of the platform.

Advertisement

The month-long ban will allow the government to research how the social media platform is being used and, in particular, will target fake news and fake accounts.

"The time will allow information to be collected to identify users that hide behind fake accounts, users that upload pornographic images, users that post false and misleading information on Facebook to be filtered and removed," Communications Minister Sam Basil said, according to the local Post-Courier.

"This will allow genuine people with real identities to use the social network responsibly," he said, adding that a specific date for implementation hasn't been set.

"We cannot allow the abuse of Facebook to continue in the country," Basil said.

Issues with Facebook are rising across Asia

Rohingya refugees after leaving Myanmar for Bangladesh last year.. REUTERS/Jorge Silva

Fake accounts and potential political interference on Facebook aren't just in Russia's playbook.

Advertisement

In 2016, weeks before Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines, Rappler found 26 fake accounts were able to influence at least 3 million accounts.

Earlier this year, Sri Lanka temporarily banned Facebook, as well as WhatsApp and Instagram, after posts inciting violence towards the country's Muslim population were discovered amid a state of emergency.

But concern reached new levels when it emerged that Facebook has contributed to the suspected genocide in Myanmar. One UN official said in March that Facebook "substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict, if you will, within the public. Hate speech is certainly of course a part of that."

A UN investigator also said that "everything is done through Facebook in Myanmar" and "that Facebook has now turned into a beast."

Problems have also arisen in Cambodia, where the Prime Minister's Facebook page has 10 million likes despite the country having less than 16 million constituents. A Cambodian opposition leader has since taken Facebook to court in California in hope of being granted information on where those likes came from.

Advertisement

Last year, Cambodia was one of the countries where Facebook tested a newsfeed change by putting publishers' content in a separate page, a move that came amid a government crackdown on independent media.

"It's astonishing that Facebook is using a group of less-developed countries as guinea pigs for their experiment, especially since the evidence shows that this separation of newsfeeds is likely to have broad and harmful effects on local public discourse and the local media market," said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, said at the time.

But censorship is also on the rise

Reuters/Dylan Martinez

Part of the reasoning for PNG's proposed shutdown is to have time to enforce the country's Cyber Crime Act so "perpetrators can be identified and charged accordingly."

The law, enacted in 2017, received praise for its focus on data and network security. But human rights groups are concerned it could also allow the government to crackdown on criticism, and ease the path to censorship.

Advertisement

Defamatory content, offensive publications, and inciting unrest can all be punished by up to 25 years in jail.

Last year, PNG's electoral commissioner, Patilias Gamato, obtained a court order to stop one blogger tweeting or sharing statements that labeled him "tomato".

In Thailand, arrest warrants are regularly issued for a range of content posted on Facebook and YouTube. One man was sentenced to 30 years for insulting the monarchy on Facebook in 2015, while another was sentenced to 10 years for comments made in a private Facebook Messenger chat.

Police also monitor Facebook posts in Cambodia. Among numerous incidents in recent years, one man was arrested on his wedding day in February for calling the government "authoritarian" in a Facebook video.

Earlier this year Malaysia introduced a fake news law and last month convicted a Danish citizen over a YouTube video that included inaccurate criticism of police. The country's new government hopes to repeal the law in June.

Advertisement

Cambodia's president is reportedly mulling a similar law.

PNG might create its own social network

Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images

In PNG, Basil seemed unconcerned about a future without Facebook, suggesting that the country may also look at creating a new social network site for local citizens.

"If there need be then we can gather our local applications developers to create a site that is more conducive for Papua New Guineans to communicate within the country and abroad as well," he said.

Facebook confirmed to Business Insider it has reached out to the PNG government.

About eight hours south of Silicon Valley sits the Monterey Peninsula, where you'll find a fledgling community that's being designed as a respite for the region's tech elite.

Walden Monterey was founded in 2016 by developer Nick Jekogian, who set out to turn the 609 acre-land into a coastal "agrihood" community, a growing trend amongst millennials in which they shun the idea of belonging to golf communities, like the previous generation, and instead embrace agricultural neighborhoods that focus on nature, farms, and outdoor living.

The property plans to build 22 homes in total, with the lots they sit costing about $5 million each (three lots have been sold, as of November 2017). After the sales are made, buyers can work with a team of more than 20 architects assembled by Jekogian (or they can hire an outsider) to then shell out additional millions in home construction.

A key step in the buying process involves prospective buyers actually visiting the land. Jekogian invites people to stay in "roving rooms," or small moveable glass houses, which allow them to experience what living on the land would actually be like.

But now, Walden Monterey will soon provide a new way to try out the land. The design studio DFA, founded by Laith Sayigh, was approached by Walden Monterey to design a house for potential buyers to stay in while they mull over purchase decisions.

The 3D-printed self-sustaining houses, dubbed Galini Sleeping Pods, are 300 square feet in size, can be moved anywhere, are powered by solar panels, wind turbines, and Tesla batteries, and will cost about $250,000 each. Sayigh told Business Insider that they're not just a future staple for the Walden Monterey community, but that they represent "the next generation of construction technology."

Take a look:

2017 was the third hottest year on record and as temperatures continue to rise some of America's cities are looking for ways to cool down. In Los Angeles, pavement company GuardTop is coating streets white to help combat climate change. Following is a transcript of the video.

Narrator: 2017 was the third hottest year on record. And based on recent trends, it's not getting cooler any time soon. Some researchers are asking, how can we stay cool? Especially in our cities. They're typically hotter than rural areas. But why?

You can thank the urban heat island effect. On hot summer days, roofs, buildings and other urban surfaces can heat up to 90 degrees hotter than the air. This creates islands of heat. One of the biggest contributors to those islands, dark surfaces. Dark surfaces absorb all wavelengths of light and converts them to heat. So the surface gets warm. It's why your mom told you not to wear black during a heatwave. Surface temperatures can reach up to 150 degrees. And since asphalt is an insulator, it traps that heat over the course of the day. Then at night when the air is cooler, the heat radiates away. Lighter surfaces, on the other hand, absorb fewer wavelengths and reflect the rest. That way, all that energy isn't absorbed. And surface temperatures won't rise as much.

So, would coating our streets white help cool down our cities? Enter Jeff Luzar, he's the Vice President of Sales for GuardTop, a pavement company looking to cool off LA. Their solution? Coat the streets white.

Jeff Luzar: We're seeing temperature difference right now of about, anywhere from about nine to 10 degrees, but again, the temperatures are pretty cool outside right now.

Narrator: When it's hotter though, Jeff says the pavement could be up to 30 degrees cooler with the white coat.

Luzar: Some of the pilot programs that we've done last year with the Bureau of Streets and Services LA City, I know they are, as well as we are, taking a look at the surfaces, making sure they're holding up, making sure they're still doing what we said they were gonna do. And they are. And some of the neighbors are saying they do feel a little difference and this and that. If we can lower the temperatures by the ambient temperature outside by degree or two, it means a lot.

Narrator: That may not seem like a lot but a report by the Environmental Protection Agency suggests that a one and half degree change could make a huge difference. Los Angeles could save over $100 million per year in energy savings and smog reductions. But what is the coating made of? Most other pavements use coal tar. Some studies have been done and that where it's showing that it could have some carcinogenic effects. But GuardTop says that its coating is made from recycled materials that don't have carcinogenic additives.

Of course, LA isn't the only warm city in the world. Other US cities are also considering coating their streets like Las Vegas. But officials there worry that it won't stick due to an oily road mix it uses to combat dry climate. And in New York City, volunteers have painted seven million square feet of rooftops white, but that's only 1% of the potential roof area. It's clear that there's still a lot of work to be done.

Luzar: I was never a big climate guy until we started getting into this product but when you see what differences one degree can make in climate change, it makes quite a bit of difference.

At this year's Sundance Film Festival, MoviePass announced the launch of a distribution arm of the company, called MoviePass Ventures. The plan was for the monthly movie-ticket subscription service to start teaming with film distributors to buy titles for theatrical release.

Days later at the festival, MoviePass announced it was working with The Orchard ("Cartel Land") to buy North American rights to one of the festival's acclaimed selections this year, "American Animals," a narrative/documentary hybrid that follows a group of friends who attempt to pull off an elaborate heist.

At the festival, Ted Farnsworth, CEO of MovePass' parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics, told a room full of distributors and industry players, "We aren't here at Sundance to compete with distributors, but rather to put skin in the game alongside them and to bring great films to the big screen across the country for our subscribers."

But a lot has happened since Farnsworth made those remarks.

Advertisement

In April, his company filed its 10-K to the SEC and reported a loss of $150.8 million in 2017. That was followed by a new filing revealing that the company has been losing $20 million a month on average since September. Due to all of this, the company's stock is down more than 98% since its high in October, but Farnsworth and MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe are adamant that everything is fine, stating that MoviePass can tap $300 million that will keep it going for over a year (though the company's access to that money is far from certain).

Now "American Animals," which will be the first release by MoviePass Ventures, is coming to theaters on June 1. And despite all these new developments, the movie's director, Bart Layton, told Business Insider he had no regrets about taking the deal with MoviePass back at Sundance.

"I don't have insight or understanding of their financial strategy, that's for people more clever than I am, but they came in, they seemed very dynamic, they seemed to have a lot of enthusiasm," Layton said on Wednesday. "As a filmmaker, your whole intention is for people to experience your movie in the theater, that was the thing that was very appealing to me. They are all about the theatrical experience."

"American Animals" director Bart Layton says the movie will be released regardless if MoviePass is in business. Nicholas Hunt/Getty

Layton also said that if MoviePass were to shut down before or during the release of "American Animals," it would not affect the movie's theatrical release.

"The cinemas are booked, the movie will go out," he said. "How it will affect us? I guess if it happened we would have a few less of their subscribers going to the movie. But hopefully at this stage those people are still engaged enough in the film that they want to see it badly enough that they would pay full price to see it."

And it makes sense for distributors, especially the ones in the indie market, to be interested in teaming with MoviePass. With over 3 million subscribers, it's not just a good tool for the movie's promotion — it plans to plaster "American Animals" all over its app, and where it has partnerships — but the distributor its working with will have direct data from MoviePass on how the movie performed with its subscribers through the movie's theatrical run (what day and time they went to see the movie, where they saw it, the ratio of males to females who saw the movie, and so on).

But how much skin does MoviePass really have in the game?

It turns out the answer is "a lot." For "American Animals," specifically, according to a source familiar with the deal, the company is an equal partner with The Orchard in all costs related to the release, including prints and advertising (the physical delivery of the movie to the theaters and the advertising to promote it). In turn, it will split box office revenue with The Orchard down the middle.

If the company were to fold before or during the movie's release, The Orchard would then have to cover the costs MoviePass was responsible for.

Advertisement

MoviePass has confirmed to Business Insider that it's jointly invested in the release of "American Animals" and the monetization of the movie with The Orchard.

MoviePass Ventures has also signed on to release "Gotti," starring John Travolta, which is coming out June 15. It will team with distributor Vertical Entertainment on the release.

Have a tip about MoviePass or anything else? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

We all know the cliche of the lazy government worker. It goes like this: with no quarterly profits to protect, a stable 9-to-5 workday (plus lunch) and a constant string of federal holidays, government employees are people with no ambition and no reason to push hard.

But President Barack Obama says that this is nothing but a myth.

"People in my White House had to work at a much harder level of sustained effort than anyone in the private sector had to work," Obama said to a crowd of 4,000 IT professionals on Wednesday, speaking on stage with Okta CEO Todd McKinnon at at Okta's annual conference in Las Vegas.

"I think there's a misperception that government doesn't work and people don't work hard," he said and then he joked, "I think people's image of government is based on going to get their driver's licence renewed."

Advertisement

When the crowd laughed, Obama quipped that dealing with the DMV, "is truly annoying."

That said, Departments of Motor Vehicles are run by state governments, not the federal government. He said he once joked to a friend a few years ago, "If I could nationalize DMVs around the country, it would be transformative, because people's ideas of government would drastically improve."

More seriously, he said that "the truth is the public sector does really hard things really well that the private sector can't or won't do." This includes everything from national security to scientific research.

He also suggested that people's frustrations — and misconceptions — come from government's poor use of technology. Government is far when it comes to using tech, he said. It's not just the DMV, at the federal level, he offered the IRS as a big example.

"The fact is, we under-invest in the IRS" in part because "nobody likes the IRS," he said. "As a consequence, we discovered basic IT systems in place [at the IRS] are held together by string and bubble gum."

Advertisement

While some might argue that it's the convoluted tax code that makes the IRS so miserable to work with, Obama dismissed that. Even if the tax code is never simplified, by upgrading the IRS's technology, "you could make interacting with IRS - I won't say pleasurable - but more efficient, more user friendly. But that requires investment that often times we don't like to do."

Lack of investment in tech increases the frustrations people experience when working with a government agency. And that contributes to their perception of the a bureaucratic or lazy government worker, he said.

For the record, Americans across all job titles work on average just over 34 hours a week, according to US Department of Labor. That's a little less than federal employees, who are expected to work 40 hours a week, typically 8:30 to 5:00, Monday through Friday.

More from President Obama's talk on Wednesday.

Seventy two years after launching the iconic Vespa scooter, Italian motor vehicle company Piaggio has unveiled its newest creation: A robot designed to help you get around without a car at all.

Piaggio Fast Forward, Piaggio's American sibling established in 2015, has been testing the Gita, a two-foot-high, two-wheeled mobile carrying robot, out of its Boston offices for a while now. The company has not yet disclosed a price, but it could start popping up in businesses and construction sites as soon as early 2019.

The company's hope with them is to encourage walking, by eliminating the need for people to need their cars to lug stuff around. The company's motto is "autonomy for humans" — in other words, creating autonomous products in the service of humans, not replacing them.

In that sense, the robot is more like "Star Wars'" heroic, helpful BB-8 droid than a superintelligent robot butler.

Take a look at how it works, below.

We're really bad at choosing passwords.

According to a new study by a researcher at Virginia Tech and Dashlane, a popular password manager service, most users make the same mistakes when making passwords, such as making their password the name of a popular brand or sports team.

And while these things make passwords easy to remember, they aren't all that secure, and make passwords easily guessable by hackers.

The study evaluated 6.1 million anonymized passwords gathered by Gang Wang, a computer science researcher at Virginia Tech, and analyzed by Dashlane. Those passwords come from the massive troves of user personal data that have been leaked in data breaches over the years.

Here are the most common patterns and mistakes people make, and what you should avoid:

Jeff Bezos is so rich that the value of $1 to the average person is about $88,000 to the Amazon founder.

Needless to say, a $12 million home renovation in Washington, DC, isn't a budget crusher.

In 2016, Bezos paid $23 million in cash for the property in DC's exclusive Kalorama neighborhood, home to the Obamas as well as Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

While the property doesn't appear to offer much privacy in the front — it was the site of the Textile Museum for about a century — it includes two separate structures with nearly 27,000 square feet of living space and a spacious backyard.

The larger of the two homes, the Wood House, will be for entertaining guests, while the Pope House will serve as the family's living quarters when they're in town. The Bezos' home base is in Medina, Washington — a secluded, 5.3-acre compound on the shores of Lake Washington.

The renovation plans were approved in September and are now underway. Below, check out the floor plan of Bezos' future mansion in Washington, DC.